UNDETECTED MURDERERS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21569, 15 February 1932, Page 9

UNDETECTED MURDERERS

BAD RECORD FOR 1931 (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, December 31. The year 1931 will close as one of the blackest on record for unsolved murders. Eleven are on the list, which brings the number for the last three years up to 24. The great majority of these have been the murders of women and young girls. The lost for 1931 is as follows: — January.—Miss Margaret Schofield battered to death in a Dewsbury street; Miss Evelyn Foster killed near Otterburn. February.—Miss Louisa Steele strangled at mutilated at Blackheath; Mrs Julia Wallace murdered at Liverpool. ; March.—lndries All, a Bengalese seaman, found murdered in Canning Town. May.—Mrs Abigail Whalley killed at Blackpool. August.—Mr R. Donald murdered in a Glasgow bank; Miss Madge Cleife murdered at Portsmouth.

October. —George Welham shot at Kennels, near Blandford; Miss Nora Upchurch strangled in an empty Soho shop. December. —Vera Page found murdered in a Netting Hill garden. INVESTIGATIONS HAMPERED. While public uneasiness grows with every addition to this tragic list, the police can make no ofiicial comment (says the Morning Post). Unofficially, of course, they make no secret of the fact that (hey consider their investigations hampered by the findings of the Royal Commission, which curtailed considerably their powers of interrogation. It is only fair to add, also, that in crimes such as the horrible murder of Louisa Steele at Blackheath and the last murder on the list, that of Vera Page in Netting Hill, the police are faced with difficulties which as a rule do not arise in the ordinary murder. Here is no need to search for motive, which in itself can usually give the police a valuable lead at the start. The murder is the work of a particular type of maniaq, who is usually not only abnormally clever at covering up his tracks, but is also probably in every other way an apparently normal and harmless individual upon whom little or no suspicion is likely to rest. It is particularly in cases of this kind that the police feel that their hands are tied by the new regulations. Unless they have actual and definite proof they can msiike no move.

This, of course, is rarely to be obtained, and they feel that in dealing with a crime committed by a maniac, they should have a freer hand, at least tc demand replies to questions, and be in a position to inquire more closely into the movements of people who might interest them in connection with the crime.

Again, in this connection, it is only fair to point out that in some of the cases whch go clown to history as “ unsolved,” the police have no, reasonable doubt in their own mind that they have solved the mystery. Lack of really conclusive evidence has forced them to leave (lie crime on the unsolved list.